Verizon Me This

May 16, 2015 1:42 PM

Is there a radical difference between Verizon pre-paid and Verizon regular contract?

Mr. Darling and I are on T-Mobile and while the customer service is stellar, the actual service is not. I have another phone on Verizon and the network has been much better. But, I don't want to pay a lot more than what we are paying now for T-Mobile (about $50 per phone per month).

We don't need a lot of data since we're both hooked up to our home wi-fi most of the time. We do need unlimited talk and text.

Is there a difference in the call quality, etc. between prepaid service and the contract service?

posted by tafetta, darling! to Shopping (4 answers total)

I switched from T-Mobile to Verizon prepaid for about six months ago and I've had a generally positive experience. I'm not certain if the prepaid network is the same as the contract network, but I've found coverage to be pretty good and much better than T-Mobile.

My plan is $45/month for unlimited talk and text and 1 gig of data. I'd prefer limited talk time at a lower price, but I don't think such a plan available. Prepaid data is limited to 3G speeds, which is not a big deal for me but could matter to you.

One minor quibble is that every time I make a call, I get a ten-second "The time remaining for this call is unlimited" announcement. I assume this is standard for their prepaid service, but it's sort of unnecessary since I have unlimited talk time.
posted by potential lunch winner at 2:48 PM on May 16, 2015

I had Version pre-paid on a regular cell phone, not a smart phone. The voice service was fine and my old phone was not on their best network. I now have a smartphone on the senior citizen plan with no problems, though I don't stress it.
posted by SemiSalt at 3:58 PM on May 16, 2015

VZW prepaid is different in two ways. First, you can use VZW cell towers, but there is no (or limited) roaming. Second, you get lower priority on the towers, meaning if there's high call volume the towers may ignore your phone entirely. If you're in a strong VZW coverage area, you may never see the difference. But if you're in a marginal coverage area or the local towers are at/near capacity, you may have virtually no signal at all.

You may also want to check their prepaid coverage map.

(I used to work for VZW, but haven't for over a year. It's entirely possible that the information above is obsolete by now, but I doubt it.)
posted by Woodroar at 4:21 PM on May 16, 2015

One minor quibble is that every time I make a call, I get a ten-second "The time remaining for this call is unlimited" announcement. I assume this is standard for their prepaid service, but it's sort of unnecessary since I have unlimited talk time.

I'm on verizon prepaid on an iphone (4s), and I don't get this, so make of that what you may. I am in a major metropolitan area.

I switched from verizon contract last year (and paid a hefty fee to get off the contract - it saved me a lot of money in the long run), and haven't noticed any service difference / degradation. Call quality has been the same (quite good, haven't had any issues or dropped calls). That said, I don't use much data at all. I can't really speak to data speeds etc, as I use only a few things including browsing mefi and using pandora. Never a problem with either.
posted by megafauna at 12:03 AM on May 17, 2015